Platform decisions made under time pressure become architectural ceilings. A commerce platform chosen for its ease of initial deployment can cap out at precisely the moment traffic grows and integration requirements multiply. The signs are predictable: response times that degrade on promotion days, integration spaghetti between ERP, WMS, PIM, and storefront that no one fully understands, and deployment processes that make every release a managed risk event. These are not technology problems in the abstract. They are the result of specific decisions made early, and they require specific engineering to address.

Gradion's commerce infrastructure practice is built on 23 years of production deployments. The platforms Gradion works with are not theoretical choices on a comparison matrix: Shopware and Spryker implementations are running in production for clients across Germany and Europe, maintained by certified engineers who have operated them across multiple major versions.

What we deliver

Platform Selection and Scoping

Platform selection is consequential and context-dependent. Shopware suits B2C, SME to mid-market requirements: flexible, well-supported in the DACH market, with a strong extension ecosystem and manageable total cost of ownership for teams without deep platform expertise. Spryker is the right choice when requirements include complex B2B pricing structures, high SKU volumes, multi-channel architecture, or the need for clean separation between commerce logic and frontend presentation. Headless custom builds are appropriate for large-scale platforms or those with sufficiently differentiated requirements that a packaged platform would require more customisation than it provides in value.

Gradion engineers are trained and certified in both Shopware and Spryker. Platform recommendations come from operational experience, not from a vendor preference or a comparison of feature checklists.

Commerce Platform Build and Configuration

The build phase is where platform decisions are validated or exposed. Gradion's approach treats performance as a first-class architectural concern: caching strategy, database query patterns, and CDN configuration are addressed at design, not added as remediation after go-live. Deliverables include catalog and pricing rule configuration, promotions, customer account management, and order management. The system is documented and operable by the client team when it is handed over.

Integration Architecture

Commerce platforms do not operate in isolation. ERP systems (SAP, Infor, Microsoft Dynamics), WMS, PIM, payment providers, shipping carriers, and marketing automation tools all touch the commerce layer. Integration failures are the most common source of operational problems in live commerce systems: orders that do not reach fulfilment, inventory that does not update, promotions that are not applied correctly.

Gradion's integration patterns for Shopware and Spryker are operational, developed through nearly eight years of embedded partnership with Shopmacher, Germany's leading e-commerce agency. More than 20 engineers have worked in production across platforms for clients including Europe’s largest retail trade cooperative, Bergfreunde, BVB, and Gamescom. These are not theoretical integration designs.

Performance Engineering

Page load speed is a conversion variable. A 40% improvement in load speed has a measurable effect on bounce rate, session depth, and completed orders. Gradion's performance engineering covers Lighthouse scores and Core Web Vitals, CDN strategy, image optimisation, server-side rendering decisions, and front-end bundle analysis. Infrastructure choices are evaluated for their performance characteristics before build, not after.

Detlev Louis, the German motorbike retailer with over 2,300 employees, achieved a 40% improvement in page load speed following Spryker migration work with Gradion. SEO rankings were maintained through the full system migration and five years of customer review data was transferred without disruption. New international stores are now launched in 20 days.

Search and Discovery

Product search is the primary navigation path in most commerce environments. Elasticsearch and OpenSearch integration, faceted navigation, and search relevance tuning require engineering discipline: synonym management, attribute mapping, query scoring, and performance at catalog scale. A search plugin installed without configuration produces results that frustrate buyers and suppress conversion. Gradion builds search as a considered component, not a default installation.

Observability and Reliability

A release should not be a risk event. Gradion instruments commerce pipelines with uptime monitoring, error tracking, and performance regression detection in CI/CD. The goal is that issues are identified in staging and, when they reach production, are detected and triaged before they affect order completion rates. Post-go-live support is structured, not ad hoc.

Proof in production

Shopmacher, Germany's leading e-commerce agency, has operated with Gradion as an embedded engineering partner for nearly eight years. More than 20 engineers work in hybrid teams on Shopware and Spryker production platforms for major retail and entertainment clients. The partnership operates at the level of shared talent pool and strategic co-development, not staff augmentation.

Detlev Louis engaged Gradion in 2018 for a migration from a legacy commerce platform to Spryker. The outcomes: 40% load speed improvement, full SEO stability through migration, seamless transfer of five years of customer data, and 20-day rollout cadence for new international stores. The engagement has continued across multiple years and platform versions.

The leading German designer furniture retailer needed supplier order management rebuilt. A Gradion team of three specialists delivered a centralised platform with AI-powered PDF parsing in eight weeks. The result was a 70% reduction in manual work across procurement, warehouse, and finance teams.

roadsurfer, Europe's leading campervan rental platform, launched a rebuilt booking platform in 20 days. The platform supports 8 languages and 7 currencies and is the operational foundation for a business that doubled both bookings and revenue within a year of launch and expanded its fleet by 40%.

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